According to North Carolina Governor McCrory, 27,000 military service members in his state will leave the armed forces in 2015 alone, representing a massive pool of highly-skilled talent. Military veterans have a strong work ethic, are accustomed to working under pressure, can make decisions smartly but swiftly, and are well organized.

But often the greatest challenge they have is translating those skills into something that we, in the civilian workforce, can understand and relate to our job requirements.

Cisco is working with the state of North Carolina to address this problem. Today, we joined Governor McCrory to announce the launch of the NC Military Pipeline, a sophisticated online platform that maps military occupation codes to civilian career paths and job openings. The Pipeline was developed by Durham, North Carolina-based Futures, Inc. with more than$2 million seed funding from Cisco.

The NC Military Pipeline will help veterans, transitioning service members, military spouses, reservists, and National Guardsmen find jobs through:

• Job postings
• Training and certification programs
• Career assessment tools
• Career path exploration
• Communities of people with similar interests

Cisco will lead a coalition of IT companies - initially including CompTIA, NetApp, Citrix, LPI, NDG and Oracle -that will post their training programs and certification programs on the NC Military Pipeline.

We expect the Cisco Networking Academy program will play a major role in this initiative, offering training on Cisco equipment and preparation for Cisco certifications. Networking Academy courses are offered at 82 institutions across North Carolina, which have taught more than 53,000 students since 1997. One of them is Clint Abrams, a U.S. Army staff sergeant who now works as a Cisco technical support engineer:

Thanks to Larry Carter, former Cisco CFO and a current trustee of the Cisco Foundation board, for representing Cisco at the event today. We are all proud to support North Carolina and Governor McCrory in making North Carolina the showcase state for veterans' employment. And we hope today is just the first step in creating a blueprint for all states with a major military presence to follow.

Learn more about how Cisco supports military veterans on our Corporate Social Responsibility website.